Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method and an apparatus for the clocked actuation of an operating switch which turns a power supply on and off for a battery-supplied receiver of an electronic motor vehicle locking system; the receiver is remote-controllable by a handheld transmitter with coded control signals and is mounted in the motor vehicle; and the receiver being remotely-controllable with infrared light control signals or radio control signals, for example.
Generic disclosure with regard to the invention and specific structure for implementing the inventive concept may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,825,210 to Bachhuber et al., for instance. Further, related information may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,835,531 to Sato. These patents are herein incorporated by reference.
The point of departure of the invention relative to the prior art is the fact that to save electricity during parking or in other words during waiting periods, and thus to save energy stored in the battery of the motor vehicle, it is known to clock the power supply of the receiver of a motor vehicle locking system.
One main problem of such methods is to find a way in which to avoid total discharges of the battery if the motor vehicle is parked for a long time and the locking system is not actuated. During such a waiting period, the receiver might receive many different control signals, but none of them would be intended to actuate the locking system. In fact, it can happen that during such a waiting period the receiver will receive many control signals that are intended for other motor vehicles, while in contrast, the control signal intended for that particular motor vehicle may sometimes not be received for a week or even longer.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to provide a method and an apparatus for supplying power to the receiver of a motor vehicle locking system, which overcome the above-mentioned disadvantages of the heretofore-known methods and devices of this general type and which avoid total discharges during the waiting time if at all possible.